Python TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable

In Python, bool is the type for the Boolean object, which is an object that represents one of two values: True or False. You cannot retrieve items from a Boolean value using the subscript operator [] like you can with a list or a tuple. If you try to use the subscript operator on a Boolean value, you will raise the TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable.

To solve this error, ensure that when using a function that returns True or False, you do not assign its return value to a variable with the same name as a subscriptable object used in the program.

This tutorial will go through the error in detail and how to solve it with code examples.

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TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable

Let’s break up the error message to understand what the error means. TypeError occurs whenever you attempt to use an illegal operation for a specific data type.

The subscript operator retrieves items from subscriptable objects. The operator calls the __getitem__ method, for example a[i] is equivalent to a.__getitem__(i).

All subscriptable objects have a __getitem__ method. Boolean objects are a subclass of integers and do not contain items and do not have a __getitem__ method. We can verify that Boolean objects do not have the __getitem__ method by passing a variable with a Boolean value to the dir() function:

val = True

print(type(val))
print(dir(val))

<class 'bool'>
['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__bool__', '__ceil__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__float__', '__floor__', '__floordiv__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__index__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__int__', '__invert__', '__le__', '__lshift__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__neg__', '__new__', '__or__', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rand__', '__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rfloordiv__', '__rlshift__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__ror__', '__round__', '__rpow__', '__rrshift__', '__rshift__', '__rsub__', '__rtruediv__', '__rxor__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__subclasshook__', '__truediv__', '__trunc__', '__xor__', 'as_integer_ratio', 'bit_length', 'conjugate', 'denominator', 'from_bytes', 'imag', 'numerator', 'real', 'to_bytes']

If we try to subscript a Boolean value, we will raise the TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable.

Example #1: Assigning Return Value to Same Variable Name as a Subscriptable object

Let’s look at an example where we have a function that checks if a number is even or not. The function accepts a single number as a parameter.

def is_even_func(number):

    # Check if number is an integer

    if type(number) == int:

        if number % 2 == 0:

            is_even = True

        else:

            is_even = False
    
    return is_even

The function returns True if the number is even and False if the number is odd.

Next, we will use the function to retrieve the even numbers from a list of numbers, and we will append the even numbers to a new list using a for loop. Let’s look at the code:

numbers = [1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 13]
even_numbers=[]
for number in numbers:
    even_numbers = is_even_func(number)
    

Once we have completed the for loop, we will print the first even number in the new list using the subscript operator.

print(f'First even number is {even_numbers[0]}')

Let’s run the code to see what happens:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
Input In [5], in <cell line: 1>()
----> 1 print(f'First even number is {even_numbers[0]}')

TypeError: 'bool' object is not subscriptable

The error occurs because we assigned the return value of is_even_func() to even_numbers, which is the list’s name to which we want to append. After the first iteration, the variable even_numbers is now a Boolean. We can verify this by using the type() function.

print(type(even_numbers))

<class 'bool'>

When we try to get the first item of even_numbers, we are trying to get the first item in a Boolean, which is not subscriptable.

Solution

We can use the return value from is_even_func() to create an if-statement. If is_even_func returns True, then we append the number to the even_numbers list; otherwise, continue to the following number. Let’s look at the revised code:

numbers = [1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 13]
even_numbers=[]
for number in numbers:
    if is_even_func(number):
        even_numbers.append(number)

print(even_numbers)

print(type(even_numbers))

print(f'First even number is {even_numbers[0]}')

We also included the type check to verify we still have a list after completing the for loop. Let’s run the code to see the result.

[2, 8, 10]
<class 'list'>
First even number is 2

We successfully extracted the even numbers from the original list and appended them to a new list.

Example #2: Subscript Operator with Boolean Value

Let’s look at an example where we have a CSV file containing seven players’ scores for a game. We want to sort the scores in ascending order and get the top three. The data looks like this:

player_ID,score
A,10
B,1
C,20
D,4
E,2
F,8
G,5

We will save the data as values.csv. Next, we will import the data into a DataFrame using pandas.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('values.csv')

Next, we will try to sort the DataFrame by the score column. The sort_values() method has an ascending parameter, which needs to be either True or False. Let’s look at our attempt to sort the DataFrame:

top_three = df.sort_values(by=['score'], ascending=False[0:2])

Let’s run the code to see the result:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
Input In [16], in <cell line: 5>()
      1 import pandas as pd
      3 df = pd.read_csv('values.csv')
----> 5 top_three = df.sort_values(by=['score'], ascending=False[0:2])

TypeError: 'bool' object is not subscriptable

The error occurs because we used the subscript operator on the Boolean value False in an attempt to get a slice of the DataFrame.

Solution

We can solve this error by removing the subscript operator from the Boolean value False and moving the slice outside the sort_values() call. Let’s look at the revised code:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('values.csv')

top_three = df.sort_values(["score"], ascending=False)[0:3]

print(top_three)

Let’s run the code to get the result:

  player_ID  score
2         C     20
0         A     10
5         F      8

We successfully sorted the DataFrame in ascending order and retrieved the top three scores.

Summary

Congratulations on reading to the end of this tutorial! The TypeError: ‘bool’ object is not subscriptable occurs when you try to retrieve items from a Boolean value using indexing. If you call a function that returns a Boolean value, ensure that you do not assign it to an existing variable name belonging to a subscriptable object. Typically, developers use functions that return Boolean values in conditional statements.

If you want to slice a sorted DataFrame, make sure you do not try to slice any Boolean values that are parameters to the sort_values or sort_index methods.

For further reading on TypeErrors, go to the article: How to Solve Python TypeError: ‘NoneType’ object is not subscriptable

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Have fun and happy researching!